"Oh, dear, dear!" Mrs. Arb exclaimed, with cheerful resignation. "And I've only got ten minutes. Well, I haven't really got that. Shop ought to be open now. But I thought I'd let 'em wait a bit this morning."
She glanced anxiously at her own establishment to see whether any customer had come down the steps from the square. But, in truth, as she had now sold the business, and the premises, and was to give possession in a few weeks, she was not genuinely concerned about the possible loss of profit on an ounce or two ounces of tea. She wandered with apparent aimlessness into Mr. Earlforward's shop.
"Did you want to see him particular, 'm?"
"I won't say so particular as all that. So you look after the shop when Mr. Earlforward is out, Elsie?"
"It's like this, 'm. All the books is marked inside, and some outside. If anybody comes in that looks respectable, I ask 'em to look round for themselves, and if they take a book they pay me, and I ask 'em to write down the name of it on a bit of paper." She pointed to some small memorandum sheets prepared from old unassorted envelopes which had been cut open and laid flat, with pencil close by. "If it's some regular customer like, that must see Mr. Earlforward himself, I ask 'em to write their names down. And if I don't like the look of anybody, I tell 'em I don't know anything, and out they go."
"What a good arrangement!" said Mrs. Arb approvingly. "But if you have to attend to the shop, how can you do the cleaning and so on?"
Elsie's ingenuous, kind face showed distress; her dark-blue eyes softened in solicitude.
"Ah, 'm! There you've got me. I can't. I can only clean the shop these mornings, and not much of that neither, because I must keep my hands dry for customers."
Mrs. Arb, vaguely smiling to herself, trotted to and fro in the gloomy shop, which had the air of a crypt, except that in these days crypts are usually lighted by electricity, and the shop was lighted by nature alone on this dark morning. She peered, bending forward, into the dark spaces between the bays, and descried the heaps of books on the floor. The dirt and the immense disorder almost frightened her. She had not examined the inside of the shop before—had, indeed, previously entered it only once, when she was in no condition to observe. Mr. Earlforward had never seized an occasion to invite her within.
"This will want some putting straight," she said, "if ever it is put straight."